


scrap metal

by vamoosi



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Babies, Cuddling & Snuggling, Ficlet Collection, Gay Robots, Gen, M/M, Racing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 09:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16851901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vamoosi/pseuds/vamoosi
Summary: tumblr's going to hell in a handbasket so i figure i'll back up all my tf bits herelargely rodidrift and whirlstorm because: I'm gay.





	1. Brainstorm/Whirl, "you make me so happy"

Sleeping’s awkward to begin with – not that he really ever realized it until he saw a grounder in recharge and realized with a jolt that oh, wow, people can sleep on their _sides_ – but that thing that couples do when they like each other and want to be close while in the same berth and not currently engaged in sexual interface, that’s like, almost impossible. There’s a word for it. The word is… right on the tip of his tongue. 

Cuddling. Right. It’s cuddling. (Brainstorm knows the word. Pretending it’s easy to forget is a certain kind of coping.) 

It’s just that they have wings and rotors and thrusters and all sorts of other kibble that gets wildly in the way, meaning that they can’t exactly curl up together and nuzzle at each other like little sleepy Earth animals. They have to figure out how to make do, and that involves a lot of experimentation involving wing sensitivity and whether one can ignore how the narrow juts of Whirl’s kibble is digging into one’s spinal strut the whole night through. It’s a bit of a nightmare at first because they’re both stubborn and they’re both impatient and there’s more than once that Whirl gets tired of Brainstorm’s fidgeting and turning and tells him in no uncertain terms to settle the hell down or he’ll kick Brainstorm out on his aft. 

_You’ve already got me committed to this recharge scrap, so let me do it, Primus._

They figure it out eventually. It’s only sort of uncomfortable, and only at first, because it means Brainstorm has to lay on his front, which makes him a little nervous because he knows realistically that his cockpit windows aren’t likely to crack underneath him but there’s still that little shiver of fear about it. His chest takes most of the weight, besides, and he can cross his arms up under his head if he wants to. If he’s there on his front, his main wings can rest over Whirl’s thin abdomen, and he can scooch up until their sides are mostly touching. And it’s nice. 

The first time they figure it out they don’t sleep, either of them, because they’re so busy being tense and unsure the whole night through, even though neither will admit it to the other. And the tension feeds off of itself and it’s a feedback loop of anxiety and stiff struts the morning after, uncomfortable groaning when they get up off the berth. They’re just not _used_ to it. Casual touch. Affectionate stuff. Not when it’s honest and genuine and promising to come back like this. 

It takes … a while. An indeterminate amount of time. Whirl probably knows; Brainstorm’s found that if he asks what time it is, or how long it’s been since some event, Whirl can come out and say it instantaneously. _Gotta know this stuff_ , Whirl insists. _Clockmaker_. But to Brainstorm it just feels like ages, maybe weeks, probably a few days, and it’s actually Whirl who pulls in a long draft of air for strength and relaxes first. The tension just empties out of him like someone’s put a hole in a barrel of energon. That’s the first part that surprises Brainstorm. 

The second part that surprises him is when Whirl tips his head to the side (he’s flexible, he’s got elastic cabling and a long and pretty neck) and sort of nudges the rim of his optic down against the top of Brainstorm’s head. It’s gentle, as gentle as Whirl’s ever been. Those curled-up Earth creatures with their soft fur come to mind again. One of Whirl’s legs comes up over one of Brainstorm’s, draping over the joint of his knee. There’s a murmur of something that’s halfway just basic, mechanical sound. 

Brainstorm feels so suddenly warm that he worries for a second that his energon’s gotten polluted. A quick diagnostic check assures him that nope, all systems are go, you’ve just got it bad. 

Whirl nudges their helms together again and he says, real low so that Brainstorm only barely hears it, “you make me happy, you weird little jet.” 

Brainstorm’s vents catch and his systems all seem to stutter at once and he’s aware that he’s making a prolonged and high-pitched noise at the back of his vocal synthesizer. 

“Well, don’t _break_ over it,” Whirl mumbles, pinching the edge of Brainstorm’s wings, and Brainstorm can’t do anything but break into a helpless and desperate kind of giggle and shove his face down further against the berth.


	2. Rodimus/Drift, "things you said too quietly"

Out in the fields of the Necroworld it’s all blue and cyan and the fluttering of wind and it would be perfect, probably, for Drift, if it weren’t for the circumstances, but the circumstances always seem to track him down in long and looping paths, spiraling circles that come tighter and tighter until the orbit of them crosses right through him. Terrible things are a kind of shifting planet and he’s the solar center pulling them in toward a heat death. It would have been nice here without the killing. Even with the memory of death, it would have been nice, to find a place between the flowers and fold his legs and sink into the peace. Remember every petal.

But the killing always comes. He’s got a piece of his sparkchamber missing; the killing is part and parcel, even if it’s not his sword. He’s folded between the flowers anyway.

“Hey, you believe in curses and stuff, right?” Rodimus says from next to him, laid out long in the grass, weathered but still blazing over the green. It would look disrespectful, but it isn’t, quite. When Rodimus stretches his arms over his head he brushes the flowers but doesn’t break them. He rolls onto his side and props his head up on a hand.

“And stuff,” Drift agrees, tipping his head to look down at Rodimus. Again. Which is a strange deja vu, now that it’s been so long. They walked a long path side by side and then the cobblestone dissolved under Drift’s feet, and he clambered back up the cliff face until he was back in step with Rodimus. Here he is, now. “Why? And you can’t say it’s because someone hexed Magnus’ sense of fun, he’s just forged that way.”

Rodimus grins because he catches every joke Drift throws out. “You’re not the one who’s had to live with that stick-in-the-mud for the last – like – forever, it feels like. Trust, me I know.” But he softens again, drops his cheek to settle against his upper arm, hand drooping over his head. “I think I might be a little cursed,” he says.

You’d have to curse every sun, Drift thinks for a hysteric moment. He adjusts his focus. “If this is because of the DJD,” he says, “they’re already gone, so –”

“Not that,” Rodimus interrupts, but frowns. “Not _just_ that, anyway. I mean, yeah, that. But also, well, the mutiny thing, and the Megatron thing, and the time travel and Swearth and Overlord and the thing with _you_  – ”

There’s barely been a few hours of peace and Drift hasn’t heard every story yet and he doesn’t even know, right now, some of the words Rodimus are saying. The meanings of them. But Rodimus’ face tenses and shifts in a familiar terrible frown, so that much, Drift does know. “Hold on,” Drift says. “You can’t act like you caused all of that.”

“No,” Rodimus says. “Yes? Ugh.” He rolls down onto his back again, huffing a vent that ruffles the flowers around him. “It’s not that,” he says vaguely, staring up, up. The sky, or space past it, maybe, the stars, a missing ship. Drift watches him.

When Rodimus opens his mouth again he speaks carefully, which – a lot of people don’t think – not many people realize the care he can put into his words, because you have to look down under the bluster and the bravado and dig a little. Get dirt in your seams. “I’m cursed,” Rodimus says, “and I’m the one who did it. So I have to fix it. No matter what it costs.”

There’s dirt in Drift’s seams. He’s heard this sort of thing before. But Rodimus used to twist up a little with pain when he talked about the cost, and now his face goes a little hard, steely in his optics. There’s just a split second of it before Rodimus shakes his head and looks over at Drift with a quickly-gathered grin. “Anyway, you know what time it is? Time for a paint job! Up and at ‘em, Drift, I know you don’t wanna miss out on painting this aft.” Rodimus shoves himself up onto his feet and cocks his hips for a second before he starts walking back toward the fortress they’ve adopted. There’s a manufactured sway in his step.

“Primus,” Drift murmurs, a low plea, “don’t let him turn out like me.”

“Get with it, slowpoke! I wanna be dry by the time Megatron finds out!”

Drift hopes this time Primus will crack the earth under their feet to say his piece but it doesn’t happen, of course, and so he rises up after Rodimus and says “coming, coming,” and he goes. If no one else will watch Rodimus, then Drift will. If no god intervenes on the part of lost and angry souls, then a wanderer must.

Drift makes sure his hands are steady when he paints.


	3. Ambulon/Whirl, Whirl wants a sexy checkup

He’s been to those movie nights once or twice, the ones that Swerve and Rewind hold, a handful of mechs packed into a dark room while Rewind projects strange human films onto a bare wall. He’d always stayed near the back, but he’d seen enough to catch on to some of the concepts they have on Earth. Like one night, they’d just spent hours watching episodes of this show consisting of nothing but an excited human wrangling animals with far too many teeth and calling them sweet little names the whole time through, and what Ambulon had come away from it with was the concept that if you show weakness, something a little wild will latch onto it. Something will slip in through the cracks and take hold and refuse to let go.

And he must have shown something, because he’s pretty sure that’s what’s happened with Whirl. 

“I don’t know, doctor,” Whirl croons, voice pitched high and breathy as he lounges across one of the medibay beds. One of his long legs is bent up at what Ambulon assumes is intended to be a seductive angle. It’s hard to tell, with the odd and curving path his legs take to begin with. “Something just feels… _off_. I think you should take a look-see.” 

Whirl does this at least once a week. He comes into the medibay with light and bouncing steps, claws tapping together at the tips in some kind of cheery rhythm, and he sets himself to annoying Ambulon to the very best of his ability. He asks a thousand questions about topics he doesn’t care about, topics he then proceeds to state that he doesn’t care about; he picks things up and examines them and puts them down where they don’t belong; he pushes three of the beds together with space between them so he can lay on his stomach with his cockpit hanging down through the gaps. He talks constantly. 

And he always tries, without fail, to try to get Ambulon to engage in sexy doctor roleplay with him. Because he thinks his tactile sensors glitched out during the last fight. Or because he has an itch he simply can’t scratch. Or because he’s sure there’s a bullet embedded right in his hip joint, if you just reach in he’s sure you can… 

“I’m certain you think that,” Ambulon says flatly as he moves through the medibay. He’s checking inventory, which is tedious and which becomes a much longer process when it keeps being interrupted by Whirl’s antics. He kneels in front of a low cabinet and opens it. Rows and rows of materials. He pulls in air through his weak fans and sighs it out. 

“I can’t see it myself, y’know,” Whirl goes on. There’s a clank and scrape of metal on metal. Ambulon figures he’s squirming around on the berth, trying to find the angle at which he looks the prettiest. “I need someone with more practiced eyes. And hands.”

“Well, seeing as I’m busy, I’ll comm Ratchet for you.” Are these kits organized primarily by color? He needs to talk to First Aid. Whirl groans a disgusted noise behind him.

“Not _him_ ,” he snaps. “Guy’s got it out for me. I swear. It’s the hands, I think. He gets new hands and he thinks he’s sooo much better than me. Little does he know, I’ve been replacing the grease he used for his joints with gun lube for months. Ha!”

“It’ll do about the same thing.” Usually, he’d think there was no need to have this number of emergency transfusion kits on a non-wartime ship. But then, this _is_ the Lost Light. 

“It’s the principle of the thing.” A screech, a clunk, and heavy steps; Whirl stops close behind Ambulon and Ambulon can feel him crouch down behind him. “You talk to all your patients this way, doc? Or am I just your special boy?”

It’s easy, forgetting Whirl’s size. He’s all spindly limbs and clicking claws, and he spends a lot of time coiled down like he’s ready to pounce. But this close together, Ambulon can sense the height difference between them, even with them both down on the ground. He feels crowded in close to the cabinets. 

If you show weakness… yeah. 

“Maybe I treat you like this because I like you,” Ambulon suggests. “Could be I care about you and I think you deserve a little better than some rushed meeting when I’m on shift. _Maybe_ I want to talk to you like a person, not a thing that needs to be fixed. Not a disease that needs to be cured. Sort of like how you bug me because you like me and trust me not to treat you the way everyone else does, like you’re two seconds away from going off.” 

Whirl bothers him, he gives Whirl blunt answers. They berate each other. No one is called _decepticon_. No one is called _freak._ It’s a safe kind of frustration. 

Whirl is still behind him, and while Ambulon knows he hasn’t won – if there’s even winning to this game – it’s a satisfying minor victory to get a moment of silence out of Whirl. He takes the opportunity to count the rest of the contents of the cabinet. When he closes it, it seems to knock Whirl back into motion.

“Mmmnope,” Whirl says, curling a little more over Ambulon. His head peers upside-down at Ambulon’s face. “Sounds like bullshit to me. Maybe you’re just a shitty doctor.”

“Probably,” Ambulon agrees, moving to stand. Whirl doesn’t give him the room to do it, but he fits up in the space between Whirl’s shoulder and the counter. There’s space enough to turn, too, even if it leaves him with Whirl nearly leaning against his hip. “Guess you won’t find out unless you get up and let me take a look at you.” 

Whirl’s optic flickers into a slim arc and his claws tap together. “Oh, _good_ ,” he says in a dangerous sort of tone, “because I’ve been having the strangest feeling _down there_ , doc…”

Whirl does this every week without fail, and more often than not, Ambulon falls for it. He shows weakness and Whirl reaches in and clamps down. So be it.


	4. Rodimus, flaming out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't remember if this was written before or after rodimus flamed out at the end of mtmte

They always seem to end up fighting _someone_ – yeah, the war’s over, the ‘cons are disbanded or whatever, Megatron’s a ‘good guy’ now but there are plenty of people out there who aren’t too pleased with Cybertron and plenty of still-loyal Decepticons left over and the Lost Light always seems to make contact with them. It’s a wild sort of coincidence, and Rodimus is pretty sure everybody hates it just as much as he does. Except Whirl, maybe, but that’s because Whirl likes any excuse to fire a gun. Kind of understandable. 

See, they’d thought, oh, a nice little planet, let’s land for a bit and take in the sights, we haven’t been off the ship a while. Lots of weird shit has been happening. We need a break from all these metal walls. And not twenty minutes later, swear to Primus, they have weapons pointed at them and they’re ducking behind rubble and it’s _awful._  

“Does anyone else feel like this is seriously unfair?” Rodimus calls over the sounds of it all. “All I wanted was a glass of high grade that _wasn’t_ diluted for once–” He ducks as something zings over his head. It’s not even a shot, it’s a rock. Someone’s throwing _rocks_ at him. This is bullshit.

It’s this handful of pissed-off aliens, organics that have a grudge against Cybertron for one thing or another. Which is not totally _wild_ , you know, they’ve got their reasons, but no matter how nicely Rodimus asked they wouldn’t stop threatening them. It’s not like they owned the place, he’d said, except it turned out that they did, in fact, own the place. Yikes. Now they’re trying to kill them and it’s really a pain in the ass. Next to him, Skids looks at him all judgmentally, like it’s _his_ fault. 

Which it might be, a little. For reasons undisclosed. Not researching the planet before he landed on it, mostly.

“All right, screw it,” Rodimus mutters, “I’m going in.” And despite Skids’ sputtered protests, he throws himself over their barrier and transforms, barreling toward the organics. He goes back to robot mode at the last second and tackles one of them, sending them somersaulting back. The organics, as it turns out, are seriously strong, and also they have about six arms each which seems like it’s unnecessary. Rodimus figures out quick he’s sort of outmatched. 

He swears, twisting, but every time he breaks free another hand latches onto his wrist or elbow. He tries to shove a knee into the organic’s gut but they just curve away from it, tugging at the joint of Rodimus’ shoulder. This was a bad idea, really, and he writhes and struggles until he’s pretty sure he’s going to overheat himself, fans whirring high, and. 

“Oh, wow, hey,” Rodimus says, still flat on his back but staring up at his hands where they’re burning. The alien is screaming and rolling away, swearing in a language Rodimus doesn’t know. “I didn’t think I could still do this! This is _awesome_!”

He kicks his feet in the air and admires the flames coming up off of them, and off his legs, and off his entire body. The organics seem content to stop firing and point at him while screeching. That’s fine by him. When he stands up and he’s still burning, they scatter, apparently unwilling to meet the same sad fate as their one friend. Rodimus whoops and the flames burn higher around him. _Awesome._

“So, uh,” Chromedome asks him on the way back to the ship. “Are you going to turn those off now that we’re safe, or…?”

“Yeah, I don’t really know how. I figure there’s probably a fire extinguisher somewhere on the Lost Light.” 


	5. Ratchet/Optimus, TFP, "Ratchet being cuddly"

“Prime!”

The datapool for people who had heard Optimus Prime speak was slim these days, certainly, but the unanimous decision was that when he spoke, you listened. He was head of the food chain, so to speak – inasmuch as Cybertronians had a foodchain. Still, everything has exceptions.

“Ratchet,” Prime answered, all calming tones and careful curiosity. He was maybe the only one among them who didn’t flinch when Ratchet called with that kind of bite to his voice. Wheeljack claimed not to, sure, but even he would wince when Ratchet narrowed his optics down and clicked his tongue. Only Optimus could look over and meet his gaze and just sort of smile.

Which infuriated Ratchet to no end.

“That high and mighty act won’t work with me,” Ratchet snapped, and that was true, too, the same thing in the other direction. It was something between them, Optimus and Ratchet, their long histories and the undeniable familiarity they had. Ratchet stomped across the small space of the missile silo, up until he was face-to-face with Prime – face-to-chest, really, what with Optimus being as tall as he was. Ratchet looked no less irritated about that.

He picked up a hand and prodded a single finger against Optimus’ chest. Optimus glanced down at it without real concern.

“Enlighten me,” Ratchet said. “When was the last time you actually sat down for a tune-up? And a real one, not a five-minute once-over just to oil your joints and call it a night.”

“I suppose it was before we landed on Earth and began a multispecies war,” Optimus answered blandly.

“Funny. Very funny.” Ratchet shook a hand out and it transformed with a click into some sort of semi-unidentifiable but suitably-intimidating medical tool. The motor in it whined a high warning pitch. “Now get into my office, brat.”

His ‘office,’ inasmuch as he had an office – inasmuch as any of them had any private spaces on this planet, in this time when Decepticons loomed all too closely – was just a repurposed side room, maybe once storage, now fitted with a berth and the few personal items Ratchet ever cared about, namely datapads and files. It wasn’t actually an office. Optimus followed him to his room and smiled when Ratchet looked back at him, got a tsking disapproving noise in return. The doors didn’t lock the same like they would in any Cybertronian construction, but the handful of them had generally learned privacy (Wheeljack excluded) so they didn’t worry when Ratchet ushered him into the room and closed the door.

“On the bed,” Ratchet insisted, and Optimus carefully put himself down, sat gently on the edge of it, respectful and patient, but Ratchet put a hand on each of his broad shoulders and pushed him back until he was laid flat on the berth. There was a moment of Optimus resisting, looking amused and quizzical until Ratchet rolled his optics and shoved, and Optimus went in one smooth go, back rolling down against the berth.

“Yes,  yes,” Ratchet grumbled as he arranged Optimus to his liking, pushing his feet and his shoulders into place, setting him laying on the berth like a regular mech, “you’re very strong, I’m very impressed. Would you cooperate, _please_.” Which had Optimus laugh low and apparently agree.

What they ended up with was Optimus laying like he was about to drift off into recharge (and who knew, really, when the last time he’d actually done that was) and watching while Ratchet climbed up onto the berth with him, pushed and shifted against him until there was, approximately, room for the both of them, Ratchet half-draped overtop of Optimus, his stockier frame leaning on Optimus’ slender limbs, his narrow hips. He rested an arm over Optimus’ chest and drew himself in close.

“Does this procedure have a technical name?” Optimus asked him, optics already slitting lazily, peering down at Ratchet resting against his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Ratchet answered, not even looking up. He adjusted and nestled in closer. “It’s called 'Optimus Prime doesn’t take a single microsecond for his damn self, and I’ll get him to relax if it kills me.’”

“Pot, kettle.” Optimus looped one of his own arms around Ratchet as best he could and that was when it clicked, the closeness, the nearness, being warm and together. He turned his head down against Ratchet’s so that his voice nearly rumbled right against Ratchet’s helm.

“It’s a multipurpose thing,” Ratchet mumbled, and Optimus laughed again before they went quiet and took in as much peace together as the day would afford them.


	6. Whirl/Brainstorm, "things you said when i was crying"

He doesn’t cry. That’s not even an, ooh, tough guy thing, like maybe admittedly a couple of the other things he does are, it’s just that he physically can’t. Doesn’t have the anatomy. Had it ripped out of him once upon a time because the whole thing with the empurata procedure is to make the patient as unlike themselves as possible, take away all the parts that make them a mech and leave a machine. Something, something, dichotomy definitions functions.

Well, the important thing is he can’t cry. Not that important. He doesn’t have a lot of use for crying anyway.

Except, except, the rest of him, the rest of his body, it doesn’t have that figured out, maybe – the gears haven’t fit their teeth together – the wires haven’t crossed. So sometimes his body says time to cry, dipshit, and then it stops being helpful altogether and just collapses inward. Implodes like a star. Crunches him up and spits him out.

Starts at his middle and makes him tense so tight that he bends over his own sharp knees, thighs scraping at his cockpit while his vents gasp for new air and his rotors sputter. Makes his head bend down so the prongs around his face drag against his glass. His claw tips grind and skip together.

But, you know, hey, no crying! No tears! So instead he’s knotted up all Gordian and clawing at the ground and wheezing, “oh frag, oh fuck, oh frag.” Curse words instead of tears. It’s really poetic, honestly, it’s an analogy for his whole sorry life. Take something that’s halfway decent and cut away the rounded parts, turn it jagged and harmful. He’s a person just like everyone else, except except except.

There’s lots of exceptions. Example: he does this not-crying thing on his own except for this time. Because this time there’s, you know, there’s someone, someone who maybe he likes and that’s worse somehow because he’s choking on nothing (he doesn’t have a mouth he doesn’t have any way to choke!) in front of someone he kind of cares about.

Brainstorm crouches next to him. They share a sort of color except Brainstorm, he’s brighter, he’s got a future, so he’s all vibrant and saturated and Whirl’s dull and aged. Brainstorm takes his mouthpiece off.

“You’re a really ugly crier,” Brainstorm says, all soft and gentle like it’s something comforting. “It’s all right, though, I’ve run the gamut of experiencing ugly crying. You’ve not seen ugly crying until you’ve seen Chromedome cry, I promise. And maybe until you’ve seen me do it once or twice.”

It’s so – stupid. Whirl picks his head up because Brainstorm’s the worst, and he’s going to tell him that, and it’s going to be so mean. But he looks up and Brainstorm grins shining bright and that’s distracting.

“Well hey there, sunspot,” he says chipperly. “Wanna talk about your feelings?”

It’s just tongue-in-cheek enough that one of Whirl’s hiccuping vents gets interrupted with a snort of a laugh, and then Brainstorm looks all _smug,_ and he can’t have that, so Whirl has to tackle him down. It’s the natural course of things.


	7. Drift+Magnus, Drift is really trying

He comes into his office and Drift is in it.

It feels, now, that nine times out of ten (here he has to resist computing the actual statistics; whenever he gives a precise number, it makes the face of the person to whom he’s speaking twist up with a resisted smirk, and just because he is not prone to smiling does not mean he cannot recognize one) when someone is in his office they are sitting upon his desk. Then again, nine times out of ten that someone is their captain, who is known for his lax sense of propriety even as he leads a full crew on a potentially endless quest through space. Admittedly he’s taken to sitting on the desk in a way that doesn’t interrupt Ultra Magnus’ workflow or disturb his organization, which is unusual, but the point still stands (sits) that desks are not to be used as chairs, despite the general consensus that this is untrue.

He comes into his office and Drift, oddly, is not sitting on his desk; Magnus stands in the doorway and nearly misses him for the fact that his feet are planted on the ground. He is still _at_ the desk, yes, but standing at it, leaning over it from near Magnus’ chair, and he’s –

_Well_ , Magnus thinks in a fleeting moment in which he is wholly and regretfully influenced by Rodimus, _what the hell._

It’s been some time that they’ve been forced in close quarters together, Drift and Ultra Magnus, and while there have been certain difficulties, Magnus has learned to approach Drift less as a potential criminal with a long list of war crimes trailing behind him and more as a colleague. Nonetheless, when he sees Drift with his hands on Ultra Magnus’ _things,_ it’s very tempting to cite every misdeed Drift has committed and arrest him on the spot. At least Drift has the courtesy to look rather like a deer in the headlights, staring at Magnus with wide eyes, frozen through every strut. It does not change the fact that he’s still nudging a data pad with the tips of his fingers.

“Um,” Drift says intelligently, and Magnus feels his scowl edge on painful. 

“Precisely what do you think you’re doing,” Magnus says, and with each word he says Drift straightens up a little. He does have very good posture, when he’s in the mood for it, Ultra Magnus will give him that. 

Drift gives a wobbling kind of smile. “Organizing?” he offers, as though there’s any chance that what he’s doing was accidental. “It’s just, it was a bit of a mess in here–”

“Excuse me.” 

“No, no no!” Now he straightens fully, hands finally flying away from the desk, up into the air in a sign of surrender. It’s rather ineffectual, considering he has at least three swords on his person. He seems to realize it when Magnus glances at each of them in turn, and when he speaks his hands inch further up into the air with every syllable. “I didn’t mean – no, you’ve done an _excellent_ job keeping the place neat, Ultra Magnus, really, it’s very impressive, it really lends your office a sense of tranquility that most of the ship doesn’t–”

“ _Excuse me._ ”

Drift winces and his hands go up higher until they’re stretched over his head. In a tragic bout of silliness, Magnus entertains the thought that he might be about to do some kind of apologetic handstand. He frowns and clears that thought right out of his processor, and deletes any similar concepts that might be forming. 

“I had to deliver some data pads!” Drift says quickly, the words running into each other with the same speed he might use to drive away from this situation. Which is exactly why Magnus has positioned himself in the doorway. “Just some reports for you to look over, nothing _really_ important – I mean, of course, every report is important in order to keep the ship running smoothly, we all must do our part to be the energon in the body of the – um – I had to deliver reports, and I didn’t want to just leave them on your desk sort of … willy-nilly.”

“Willy-nilly,” Ultra Magnus repeats, and he finally glances down at his desk properly. Near Drift’s hip, and what Drift had been touching, is a fresh pile of data pads. Usually when Magnus receives these they’re barely balanced, or worse, strewn haphazardly across the surface of the desk. What Drift has left is set tidily in an even stack, and even – oh, if Magnus had Rung’s frame his eyebrows would be set high on his forehead – set along the same straight line as the rest of the materials present. 

His mouth opens but he has nothing further to say. 

“I know you hate it when things are messy,” Drift goes on, arms still outstretched. “Which has to be awful on a ship like this. I mean, Rodimus is wonderful, but he’s still… Rodimus. And I know a lot of people treat it sort of like a joke, or do things on purpose to annoy you with it, so I thought I would just try and make things easier for you, for once? You do a _lot_ of work.” 

Drift glances down to the stack of data pads and then up again to Magnus and frowns. “Unless I did it wrong and just made things more difficult –” 

“No,” Magnus interrupts. He frowns at himself, feeling out the words on his tongue before he says them, unsure how to proceed. Drift is … not wrong, here; messes are like sudden potholes in roads that are usually smooth, catching Magnus by the wheels and sending him skidding. He’s prepared for that, by now. Messes are everywhere, and certainly numerous on the Lost Light. No one has specifically kept things neat for him without being asked since… 

Hm.

“Thank… you,” Magnus says brokenly, frowning deep as he does. He’s not entirely certain what expression to wear for this sort of situation. Drift, though, smiles, relaxing by degrees, shoulders untensing. His hands start to come back down. 

“Of course,” he says, tipping his head in the way he does when he’s truly focused on someone. Magnus isn’t certain when he picked up on these little cues. Proximity will do that, he supposes. “Like I said, you do a lot for everyone. Someone ought to do something for you once in a while. You’re a good person, you know. I want to be your friend.”

It all feels disjointed and sudden and unpredictable to Magnus, an unfixable mess in its own right, and he’s distantly aware that his mouth is hanging open again. Drift comes close enough to pat him on the elbow in an affectionate kind of way, then slips out under his arm, turning so he doesn’t so much as brush against Magnus’ plating. 

Magnus stands there a while more. He feels his systems racing to try and catch up to all of this, and he has the sense that they never really will. 

When he sits at his desk finally, he finds that the reports are organized by date, as well. He picks up his own datapad and opens his list of non-urgent tasks to be completed. _Do something nice for Drift_ , he types carefully, and saves it, even though it doesn’t seem to make any sense. 

The Lost Light rarely makes any sense. Perhaps he can accept a tiny bit of that.


	8. Rodimus/Drift, "your lips are really warm"

Drift comes back (comes home, if not for the way their home has been stolen away from them twice over now). Rodimus thinks, in short order: a second chance, I’ve never had a second chance like this, one that I didn’t have to dig up from the grave of the first; he looks beautiful, spotless, new, and I’m old and crumbling; oh Primus, but we have Megatron here. We’re hosting the mech who twisted Drift inside out in the first place.

All in all, evidence suggests this won’t be a permanent stay, so Rodimus flares stubbornly bright and makes the damn most of it. No time to grovel and grieve with bullets knocking down their doors. He tries to write his sorrys in the way he watches Drift’s back.

There’s a miracle and another and Drift stays despite it all. Or maybe he’s just as marooned as the rest of them, but either way Rodimus gets to see his gleaming whites and reds. And that, that, is a gift in itself, shoots hope through Rodimus’ frame right up his spinal strut. He doesn’t want to push it, though. They’re closed up in this space that’s all made out of dead memories and ruined craters and if Rodimus is – if he’s _Rodimus_ , that’s going to be the end of it, for sure. Drift smiles at him but Rodimus knows, you know? It’s conditional. Grow up, Rodimus.

Anyway, he stares at Drift whenever he thinks he can get away with it just because soaking him in helps Rodimus’ spark stay in one glowing piece. They had this talk one time but it was in the middle of a fight that Rodimus wasn’t entirely certain they would survive and it was rushed and uncomfortable so it doesn’t much count. He stares at Drift and the way he looks different but he’s the same, his swords are the same, his great sword hums with that old energy. Even just that steadies him.

Measured distance. Yeah. Get too close and the tension will snap sharp. Whatever he can do to keep this barely-mended thing of theirs together, even if it means keeping a sort of radius around Drift, like not approaching something holy, giving him all the space he could possibly want –

Drift turns with his smile open and easy and he says, “Hey, Rodimus, do you want to go racing?” 

And Rodimus is up on his feet saying, “are you kidding, Drift, I _always_ want to race” and he’s grinning and taking them out to the open fields of this empty planet so they can drop into their alt modes and toss dirt up behind their wheels when they careen through the flower patches. 

He realizes suddenly that he hasn’t driven for fun in – just – it’s been a long time. He used to do this with Drift a lot, even through the ship, the halls of the Lost Light forming a makeshift track with sharp turns that Drift was always able to handle way better than Rodimus could, but things have gotten away from him (far away from him). He hasn’t tasted open air streaming over his windshield and spoiler in even longer. It’s like he just forgets to be stressed and tense and taut, it strips off him like old paint, it peels away in the wind. Drift pulls ahead of him just by half and leads him veering around the flowers, careful never to touch one with more than the gentle clouds of their exhaust, his tires skidding over the ground. There’s a sound following after him, repetitive and bubbling.

When Rodimus pushes himself up to Drift’s side he realizes it’s laughter. He hasn’t heard Drift laugh in… 

He takes a turn too hard and he’s distracted and he tumbles over on two wheels and nearly smashes into Drift before he falls out into robot mode and barrels into him, Drift going down into his root mode too, the two of them somersaulting all knotted and tangled and laughing because it’s funny, it’s hilarious, even if they’re scuffing Drift’s clean clean plating. They end up with Drift on top of Rodimus, head dropped down so it’s resting on Rodimus’ chest because he’s still caught up in giggling. 

Oh god, Rodimus realizes, his spark a melting warm pool in his chest, oh _god_ I missed him. Missed him the way his tires missed the dirt. Rodimus takes in the sight of his smile and his laugh up close like this for as long as he can. 

“I really needed that,” Drift says. “Ratchet’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but he can’t exactly… well, don’t let him know I told you this – he’s so _slow_.” Drift picks his head up, grinning. 

Rodimus means to say something witty and fun and cute in response. Instead he opens his mouth and he says, “I missed you so much,” his voice crackling and rough. The words feel like they’ve been dragged out of him.

Drift’s smile goes smaller, but cleaner. Fond and familiar. A little bit worried, like it is all too often. He leans down again, but his forehead doesn’t touch down to Rodimus’ chest. Drift kisses him and Rodimus thinks his spark sputters. 

“Your lips are really warm,” Drift says in a hush after. “I almost forgot about that.”

“The – the rest of me is pretty warm, too,” Rodimus mumbles helplessly, and he gets treated to that laugh again.


	9. Whirl/Brainstorm, sparkling's first flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> help me

When they’d first announced the whole thing – the new life thing, the sparkling thing, this him and Whirl and a new tiny mech thing – there was a lot of surprise among the crew. A lot of mechs being all appalled and horrified and wow, really, the two of you, are you sure? And Whirl getting into more than one fight even though he was carrying, showing a little bit at the slimmest place of his waist that had gotten plump. Ratchet was furious about it, Rung had a weird group meeting to explain how it could be very hurtful to act as though Whirl wasn’t deserving of having a family, it was all entirely uncomfortable for everyone.

Brainstorm didn’t get it. Whirl had totally babysat for Skids and Swerve that one time, and it’d gone great. Of course he was gonna be a great parent.

That was a couple of gestation periods ago. More than that, actually, since they were fully out of that stage where the little thing they’d made looked mostly like an amorphous metallic shape, all gray and squinting, squished and soft. She’d gotten a lot more defined as time passed, as her metal figured out its shape, and Scuffle – that was her name, Scuffle, Whirl had said ‘what about something with one syllable’ and then said that and Brainstorm had lovingly told him he was dumb as hell – she’d started sprouting fingers and stabilizers and rotors. There’d been a little while where they weren’t sure which way she’d go with it, if she’d grow out blades like Whirl’s or if her plating would spread out into wings, and she kinda wobbled back and forth for a couple of weeks, nubs of wings growing and then smoothing out again. Whirl started a betting pool in the bar because he was supposed to stay off drinking while he recuperated or something ridiculous like that and he needed to distract himself. He cornered Drift and made him swear to make Primus make her go helicopter, even though Drift protested that that wasn’t how it worked at all.

So naturally when she finally settled on being a jet, Brainstorm paraded her around the halls crowing about it, Whirl hopping after him and swearing like a particularly pissed off bird.

It didn’t stop him from considering her the best mech to ever live, of course. Whirl doted on her like he’d only ever doted on live firearms, kept her in his arms more often than not, figured out the perfect way to arrange his curved claws so he could cradle her without hurting her. Some part of it broke him up when they were alone, just him and the little one, sometimes where Brainstorm could see and file the memory away as a gift and a blessing. She was a little tiny jet with little tiny wings now, and she was theirs, too.

And she was precocious as anything, which Brainstorm learned when he found Whirl lounging on the ground in a mostly-empty observatory, long legs crossed at the knee and arms pillowed behind his head as he watched a tiny shape swoop and sputter overhead.

“Hey,” Brainstorm said, stopping short in the door, pointing. “Hey, is that ours?”

“Uh-huh.” Whirl’s optic was curved into a happy little arc, tracking Scuffle as she dove dangerously close to the ground before catching herself, wings quivering and engines pushing as hard as they could to keep her in the air.

According to texts – not that there were all too many that Brainstorm had access to, here in deep space at the tail end of a war that was supposedly over – Scuffle was a couple months out from starting to use her alt mode for airborne travel. She shouldn’t have been able to really figure out her engines for at _least_ a few more weeks. A minute passed where he could only feel utter glee that their daughter was clearly and without question a genius prodigy. But then Scuffle gave a high pitched “whoa!” and smacked nose-first into a window, did some somersaults backwards, collapsed in a heap in her root mode. She sat stunned for a second before frowning lopsided and picking herself up, ambling back towards Whirl and climbing up onto his cockpit, jumping off the high peak of it and switching back into alt mode to glide and force herself higher.

“You think we should be letting her do this stuff?” Brainstorm asked, watching her fly clumsily.

“Sure,” Whirl said. He pushed himself up a little on his elbows so he could actually look at Brainstorm over his cockpit. “Better she go ahead and clonk herself in the face when she’s still small enough to bounce, right? Gonna happen sometime. I tried putting blankets down but she caught one on fire with her lil’ tiny afterburners.”

“She’s got _afterburners_ ,” Brainstorm squeaked, voice tight with adoration, and Scuffle veered so close she clipped a wing against his middle and took a spinning dive down to the floor. Whirl reached out and caught her before she could make impact.

"Who’s a cute little dive bomber, huh?” he cooed, holding her up over him. She was still in alt mode and she giggled and her engines sputtered joyfully. Brainstorm’s legs seemed to unlock, then, and he crossed the room to sit on Whirl’s hips (“oof, Primus, d'you mind, you’re heavier than Magnus after a good meal”) and take Scuffle out of his claws and hold her up close.

“Your problem is that you’re getting tips from a helicopter,” Brainstorm told her in a conspiratorial sort of whisper. “He doesn’t know anything about finesse. All he knows is going up and down, anyone can do that.”

“Oh, what,” Whirl shouted, and they all went upside down when he reared up and toppled them, and Scuffle shrieked with laughter and Brainstorm cackled and really, honestly?

He didn’t understand at _all_ why anyone had thought they’d be bad together, the three of them.


	10. Rodimus/Ultra Magnus, "things you said when you thought i was asleep"

Rodimus does things too … romantically. Well. That makes it sound like a fault, which in one sense it is, absolutely, but to say as such that bluntly would only get Magnus skeptical and possibly horrified looks from the more emotionally inclined members of the crew (Drift, Chomedome and Rewind, Whirl even depending on the mood). It isn’t that he has a propensity for romance in and of itself, it’s just that he expects certain romantic things to just… happen.

“In movies,” Rodimus had said once in some fit of passion, “in movies they make these big confessions, and they kiss the daylight out of each other, and they lay in the berth together just looking at each other beacuse that’s how much they care about each other –”

“I think I prefer my daylight precisely where it is,” Magnus had answered, and for some reason it had make Rodimus laugh for about four minutes straight. And he’d said, “aw, Mags, never change,” and Magnus had said, “don’t call me Mags.”

Still, he’s watched the movies that Rodimus has. Some of them, at least, because of Swerve’s gatherings when they finally expanded past just some furtive group of human media lovers and because of Verity Carlo who insisted it would help him loosen up and then sighed when it did not do that at all. He’s watched some of those movies, and seen some of those scenes, and, loathe though he is to admit it, understood the appeal.

It’s just that he would never in his life be caught having a moment off-guard when he was meant to be working. It was antithetical to the purpose of being on duty. What good would it serve to be on the bridge if he was going to just ignore his job?

Fortunately, he’s not an entirely unbelievable actor. At least not so much that Rodimus catches on. He’s rather better at pretending to be asleep than Rodimus is, anyway, because Rodimus pretends to be asleep the moment that responsibility calls and it never convinces Magnus.

He is in his office. And he is bent over his desk, which has been carefully arranged so that his arms folded over it won’t disturb anything important, and his optics are dimmed to darkness. But he has proximity sensors and audio feeds and he hears it when Rodimus bursts in through the door, alight with, “Hey, Mags–” and then cutting silent.

This is for Rodimus’ benefit, and not his. Rodimus’ benefit includes a thin and comfortable blanket located conveniently near his desk, so that when Rodimus creeps in he can take it and shake it flat and drape it over Magnus’ wide shoulders, tuck it around his neck and back. Rodimus’ hand lingers on Magnus’ plating, a long but fleeting moment. Magnus can feel him lean close and brush a dry kiss near the corner of Magnus’ optic.

A movie moment, then, with quiet and care.

Rodimus kisses his cheek again so that Magnus can feel the curve of his smile against his face. And Rodimus draws back a degree, enough that he can speak, and he says, “I totally know you’re faking, but sleeping bots can’t get mad if I call ‘em Maggie.”

Rodimus smacks another kiss on him and – Magnus can feel this, even if he can’t see this – _struts_  away. Ugh.

Still, it was maybe worth it.


End file.
